What Should Leaders Learn from History?

Hello, before I got on a plane to come here, a friend of mine asked the question and the question was: if I had an alternative title for my talk tonight,

what

would it be? I thought about it a bit and decided maybe. the title was a call for balance, so obviously there are two forces throughout

history

that have shaped every civilization without exception and those two forces do not like each other, they are in conflict with each other, they clash. The first force is the Innovative Force. The Innovative force is the force that believes that the only way to greet the future is through change.

It likes change. It seeks change. It is a very dangerous Force, especially when it is unleashed and there is no counterweight because it will destroy. culture and it will change traditions and it will change identities and it will raise uncomfortable questions. On the contrary, the other force is the preserving Force. The preserving Force doesn't just want to lock things in place right now. In fact, there is almost always something incredible about it. event from the past that he considers as a model not only for the present but also for the future; In other words, there is some time in the past when the preserving Force says this is

what

we

should

do.

I can't believe we do it. We are doing what we are doing, what we are doing now is wrong, the innovative forces have gotten out of control, the problem is that our species, at least for the last 12,000 years, has continued to constantly change the amount of technology available, in other words. Whether we like it or not, we have been in a state of constant change for 12,000 years, just look at what we have done in the last 200 years, in the last 50 years, in the last 20 years, the pace of change has actually slowed down. accelerated so that it is geometric, it is an exponential curve, which of course is scary because it means that on the one hand, some of the innovative forces are out of control, they are out of balance and the conservative force loses control of that and as a result we see a pendulum swing if your society has some balance, the pendulum swing

should

be somewhat gentle, it should not be too horrible.

There has been one state that has done a decent job over the last two centuries of achieving a level of equilibrium and it is Sweden that is used for 175. For years it has used its democratic institutions to slow things down if change was too rapid and the Swedes would vote conservative, but then when Swedes were ready for more changes, they would vote socialist and today Sweden is a country of 11 million people. It is one of the largest economies on the planet. It is stable. People have acceptance. They have levels of happiness. In contrast, one of the most shocking events in terms of imbalance was the conflict that took place in Spain from 711 to 1492.

In the south, Spain was governed. by the Muslims it was innovative, it was diverse, it accepted that it had commerce, it made inventions, it changed things as minor as the way shoes were made, the term cord waner comes from Córdoba and a stark contrast, the fanatical fundamentalist Christian states of the north They sought to not only create a unified Spain, they sought to crush that diversity and create a homogeneous state where everyone believed essentially the same thing they sought and then also purge Spain's Jewish and Muslim populations in the process. The incredible thing about the Spanish moment is not only that the conflict lasted 781 years and not only that, by most people's standards, the bad guys, Juan, the homogeneous population of Crusher, but that it all came together in one year, for which was obviously a process that took eight centuries, but in one year, 1492, a bunch of them lined up. just as they wanted it until the kingdom of Granada Falls the last Muslim kingdom the Jews are expelled and then 10 years later the Muslims are expelled now obviously many Jews and Muslims converted and became converts and shellfish but it is also the air that the world has changed dramatically forever is turned upside down and shaken because it is the year that Columbus begins the conquest of North and South America by the Europeans it is the year that triggers a catastrophe for the Native American populations within a century about 150 million Native Americans die, it is incomprehensible Mass slavery Conquest, entire civilizations are destroyed and it was possible because the Spanish had so much momentum from the war machine they had built to crush the Muslim south that they simply took advantage of that momentum and unleashed it on the new world and when they did, they brought with them that conservative force of homogenization and the result was that although the Spanish created a massive empire that stretched across two continents and then the Philippines, they did not have the ability to adopt, not they had the industry to develop their to maintain their war machinery to replace the English armor and sanket in other words, what they had done by creating this society locked into a homogeneous society is that they had lost the ability to innovate and adapt for the future , so even though the Spanish Empire lasted 300 years, the only reason it lasted 300 years was that its enormous size gave it the momentum to sustain itself;

In other words, the conservative Force lost its balance and control and was catastrophic in the conquest of the Americas. Possible was also what doomed the Spanish Empire, but having said that, it's not really what I want to talk about. I don't want to talk about the past, well yes, but the more recent past, I actually want to dive into something a little bit. a little bit closer to us and I was thinking about it and we live in a world where everything is ideological, everything is liberal conservative. I'm so exhausted by it, sometimes a socialist and at the end of the day I have horrible names for everyone, no one knows enough to be one. sure about anything and the fact that you are sure makes me sure that you are wrong, so to avoid that and not upset people, I decided to try to do something a little apolitical but still to illustrate my point, so my story en I'm going to tell you a little story about NASA's proper space exploration.

People generally don't bother too much with space exploration. I should be able to get away with it in 1972. NASA approached President Nixon because they had just made a discovery, it was a really cool discovery, it turns out that if they launch a probe by 1977, if they launch a spacecraft by 1977, they could catch the Four large gas giants with a single spacecraft could send this probe to Jupiter, use its gravity to launch it past Jupiter and pass to Saturn. From Saturn to Uranus, going from Uranus to Neptune and then leaving the solar system and sending data back to us all the way, Mania was going to hold out.

The reason they knew Rick Nixon was going to resist is because Nixon was part of the conservative Force in American parlance. We would say conservative, but it's not really a liberal conservative thing, so I want to be careful with that, which is why I'm using conservative for us. In 1968, Nixon believed he had been elected to undo the '60s that were his. His administration wanted 1973 to be 1953. Honestly, I think if it could have been 1853, he would have preferred that, but at least 1953, the year he became Eisenhower's vice president, so two years after we landed in the Moon. 1971, Nixon drastically cuts NASA's budget.

They are punished for their success, so in 1972 they know they are in trouble, so they go to the president with tears in their eyes because they are worried that he will say no and they tell them about this incredibly strange event where the planets are not really aligned, but more or less aligned for research purposes, they are aligned, they need to launch before '77, so they can't wait for the election results, and besides, Nixon could get a second term, so they need permission now to be able to I have them and they are leaving. Would you authorize us to send this probe to observe the four great gas giants? and of course your answer is no and the reason your answer is no is because you see science as part of the problem, what does science do? asks questions, he never actually answers any questions, when you finish answering one question you end up with 13 more questions and the result is that he leaves us surprised, I just don't like electrons, electrons are so strange that we can In fact, we have a situation where we can look at an electron and it behaves like a particle and then we can change the parameters and it acts like a wave, but this is the really strange thing: the way we change which one does it is if we look at the data. about how it behaved if we don't look it acts like a wave as soon as we look it acts like a particle it's almost as if the electron is aware that we're looking well you see you're doing fine, I'm not I'll never think about electrons again.

I'm done with this, it's protons for my future because protons are predictable, so Nixon is looking at this and saying we just made the '60s and it's because of people like you, innovators holding summits. to get ideas talked about, that's what it is, in case you haven't figured it out yet, it's an opportunity to share and maybe make people uncomfortable at times, but to spread ideas and Nixon comes to the 60s, which by the way were 15. The years began in 54 and ended in 69. What happened with Steve was a total upheaval, it was a revolution in the true sense of the word, a real revolution.

We changed everything, we changed the way people dressed, we changed the way men did their hair, we changed the music we listened to. to change the political structure we made room for women to have more political rights movement to have more economic rights we made room for black people we made room for brown people we did not make everyone equal there is no way that would be naive and It is foolish and foolish to think about it. , but at least it improved. We changed our relationship with drugs, marriage, sex and everything, and Nixon and his people hated every moment of it, it was torture for them, they wanted the old order back and that's why he says no.

He says no to NASA, so they start begging and they're trying to get something out of this and someone has the idea of ​​two two planets, what if we compromise? What if, Mr. President, he just gives us two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, and the president says he's fine? two planets, which of course is brilliant on NASA's part because all they have to do is launch the probe to the first two planets and it will automatically get the other two in 1977, after the launch of Voyager 2, NASA changes their course to officially select up Uranus and Neptune and we did and Voyagers one and two, of course, come down and the story is that the largest probes ever sent to space are incredible, so Nixon's interference with NASA such It may not be the worst thing that has happened to the world, but it has a serious consequence.

The Saturn V rocket that we launched to the moon was never intended for the moon. Phantom Braun didn't care about the moon. We cared about Mars. The goal was for the moon was the first step to Mars, that's where we were going and that same year NASA got stuck asking the president for permission to go to Mars too and he said absolutely no, we are not wasting American taxpayer dollars that could be used to cut taxes for the rich and fighting the war in Vietnam. So he said no, so they had a backup plan. They said okay, how about this, Mr.

President, and if we design a test and we use a space van and he goes to a space van, what is that, the space shuttle, obviously, is the spacecraft with a payload on it. on the back you can put stuff in it and he says oh I can relate to pickup trucks and I bet the American public can too and he approves now in NASA's mind they thought they were manipulating the president again they thought so what they were going to do I understood that this was the space shuttle to build a space station bringing things to it and then once they had the space station, they would bring the things to build a spaceship to go to Mars from the space station.

This is the first necessary step and here we are, it is 2023 and we are not very close, we have not reached Mars, what they needed the president to do was to make a Kennedy Kennedy said that by the end of this decade we will be on the moon, they needed us to The president did let's say that by the end of this century we will be on Mars, he didn't do it, so there are consequences at that level, but in reality there are consequences that are much worse than that. Nixon tried to identify what the causes of that revolution were. which we call the 1960s and he and his friends concluded that there were two things that caused this was the incredible US economy from 1948 to 1973 for 25 years the US economy was so amazing that it was possible get a job, I mean a regular job I don't mean an amazing job, just a job and the salary would be so high and the benefits so amazing that not only could you afford to buy a house and feed your family, but you could also send your children to school, to university and and you may be able to retire very well,Picketty says in his book The Capital in the 21st Century that, in fact, that was the only time in human

history

when a person could work and make wealth properly because if you look at the current middle class in the The United States does not generate wealth, it barely obtains because the difference between the middle class and the lower class is that the middle class has stable homes and the lower class does not have stable homes the wealth distance between the lower class and the lower class the middle class It's insignificant, it doesn't make sense, they're barely getting by, but for 25 years people prospered and what they realize is Maslow's hierarchy of needs if people don't worry about food, if they don't worry about housing, if you do not have access to Constant fear that the economic situation they are in will collapse.

They have mental space to start asking bigger and better questions, like wait a minute, what about civil liberties, civil rights, human rights, and the next thing you know in 1954, six years? In this explosive economy, we are in the middle of a revolution, the other thing that Nixon identifies as a problem is our education system now, if I say that today the American education system generally people laugh and by the way, that's appropriate, so feel free to move on. and do it right now so I'm a college professor I've been at this I've been a professor I've been a professor for 28 years I think something like this and I have to tell you that I have a constant stream of students who have basically never had an idea in their brains and in their lives. and they can barely read and they can't do math, it's not something, they take out their phone, their external brain and use it instead and then I think, wow! but when you think, like when you

learn

math, neural pathways are built in your brain, which means part of your brain is undeveloped, which means you think differently than I do, which is fascinating, it could be a power, maybe having a mathematical brain or a mathematically trained brain limits you in some ways, but at the same time it worries me, especially when I read the essays and then I start crying, so what Nixon is trying to do is start undermining the education system American on purpose.

It doesn't really do much harm, honestly, it doesn't do much harm to the economy either, but it does harm the economy. 1973 is pretty much the high point of the American Empire for those who haven't realized we've been in decline for 50 years 1973 was our apex, it was our height, but it was also the time when we had the most egalitarian society we've ever had. had, there was class mobility, the distance from the poorest person to the richest person was actually very low and it was a time of innovation, I mean, we landed on the moon, that wasn't bad, think about how primitive the computers, they were so horrible that they had to hire mathematicians to verify the results of the computers because they knew the computers were unreliable they could get the answer quickly but they couldn't get it to you accurately they were black women we put them in back rooms don't worry no one had to know they called computers that was his title that was his job, so Nixon doesn't do all the damage, but he does some, and by many socioeconomic indicators, the United States begins to go backwards in 1973.

In other words, in many ways, The economy in 1973 is something most Americans dream about. And we remember that it's our imaginary moment when we think about the economy that the conservative nature wants to return to, so when a politician stands up and says, "I'm going to do something like make America great again," they're thinking about the year 1973. economics when they hear that they are thinking of 1953 sorry, they are thinking of 1853 when they think of the social order so they are really here to take America back to the 19th century Reagan is the guy who destroys the educational system that cuts funding is terrible, we've had 40 years of underfunded education, so why does any of this matter? from 1962 to 1972, so 10 years was when we built the Saturn V rocket in my mind, it's still the best rocket of all time.

I know the SLS has more and is a little more powerful, but the Saturn V was glorious and when I say 1962 the first. They spent two years designing the rocket, they didn't actually start building the components until '64. In today's dollars, do The Apollo program cost 10 billion dollars, basically, if you think about it, that's nothing, it was money well spent, just the photos of the moon were worth 10 billion we decided that we are going to launch the space program 50 years then what we've been doing for 50 years points to something we've accomplished in the last 50 years besides cell phones.

I was going to grab mine but I realized I didn't have it on me and we have these amazing computers, these laptops, okay that's cool and the Hollywood entertainment man can really knock it out of the park. Television these days is amazing, but name something like Did We Really Cure Cancer? Name something we've done that's monumental in the last 50 years that stands up to going to the moon. A discovery we made. The Higgs boson was cool. I remember exactly where I was when the Higgs boson was discovered. I was on a dirt road in Vermont driving listening to the BBC crying because I couldn't believe how cool it was, but that was just for a few nerds, something that everyone could look at and say, wow, this is awesome, This is the moment we have achieved. something that all civilizations before us have those things there's something they can look at and we did too until 50 years ago it's almost like we decided we were done we achieved what we wanted we went to the moon we were finished let's go to redo it let's go to return to the Moon, so we have to restart the entire space program, including building a rocket to replace the Saturn V.

That project took 11 years to build the SLS space launch system. I feel like that's the rocket with the worst name. Is the space launch system ever not a rocket? Did we just name our rocket rocket? I feel like we named our rocket rocket 10 11 years 11 billion dollars Saturn V was 10 years 10 billion dollars let's call it fair it's close enough what's an extra billion in an extra year we built 15 Saturn V rockets we built two SLS somehow 50 years ago we were seven and a half times more productive 50 years ago when our computers were so horrible we had to have a backup computer to check calculations 50 years ago when we didn't have all the alloys and plastics that we have today, the same money, so you can't blame the financing, the same amount of time, so you can't say it was rushed, how come we were 50 years ago?

It's much more innovative that we could land on the Moon six times, that we could connect with the Soviets in space and now we're trying to reimagine all of that again and the answer is that the preserving force in the United States economy was so good and so complete that the United States simply does not have the capacity to operate like it used to, so here is my plea, my plea is that the world

leaders

do not abandon the Preserving Force if the Innovative Force were to go out of balance that is not good it will erode things for example history is quickly forgotten not interested in the past or culture or family ties it is dangerous what I am saying maybe is to hold on to it a little less tightly so that when innovations emerge, we can adapt and involve more community members.

One of the things that has happened over the course of the last 50 years in the United States is that college has become increasingly exclusive, not inclusive, it has become so expensive that a person tends to ask a really strange question: I am willing? because, right, America is such a strange place that we want to charge huge amounts of tuition for public post-secondary education. Do we really have enough MDS to be able to afford to eliminate this? eliminate them, do we really have enough engineers and the answer is obviously no? America is six percent Asian, but thirty percent of our MDS are Asian, so we have compensated for the fact that our education system is terrible by simply importing and draining brains.

In the rest of the world, what we should do is fix the education system, so I still say that 1853 is what they are looking for because in the 1853 system white men like me are the only people who have privileges and power are the only people. that they have a guaranteed path to that, I can be completely mediocre and I still have a chance to make it, well America has 59 whites today so 29 white men participate in class even if you let half the white man because the other half was too. poor to go anywhere, even if you let half the white man make it, you're down to 20 14 and a half percent 15, can you really afford to waste 85 percent of your talent and my answer is not in 2023, in 2023 too many things have gone wrong the environment has gone wrong our planet is destabilizing we are 90 seconds to midnight according to the Doomsday Clock we have some real problems and we are going to have more pandemics in the future actually, frankly, I think Covid was easy and I think we were very lucky.

I mean, think about the bubonic plague and smallpox. This could have gone very wrong and it just didn't. We dodge it. What we must do is take advantage of our intellectual capacity. and we must also remember something that, on some level, the Conservative Force got it wrong because what the Conservative Force is preserving at that time was innovation, in other words, through the lens of history, at the end of the day, the conservative and the innovative. It looked the same in the past, only now we're annoyed and obsessed with it and freaking out and so on.

I ask for more balance when it comes to allowing changes to occur in society. Thank you.